


No hug, no kiss, no welcome back

by Legs (InsanityRule)



Series: A Modicum of Humanity Makes Everything Harder [13]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Gen, answering the burning question of where Harvey's been in my future universe, mild medical stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 04:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11913081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsanityRule/pseuds/Legs
Summary: Following a devastating Joker attack on the city Harvey is left in the coma ward at Gotham General, and every Tuesday Jim brings in coffee and donuts.





	No hug, no kiss, no welcome back

It's a Tuesday, and Jim always comes to the hospital on Tuesday mornings. They'd started up a routine before, and every Tuesday morning they stopped at the same stand in the city, grabbing the same paper and donuts, and Jim would sip away at a too strong coffee while Harvey bitches about the new captain, and they'd laugh, and after about an hour their shift would begin.

The bomb went off on a Tuesday.

Jim brings his own coffee and a donut into the hospital with him, waving at the nurse behind reception and walking down the hall like usual. He's been doing this for two years now, excluding some very rare Tuesdays when he couldn't get there in the morning, and every day it's the same thing. He sits in a chair by the window, right next to Harvey's hospital bed, listening to the sound of hospital equipment as steady beeps and quiet hisses of air fill the otherwise silent space.

Sometimes, when work is stamping down his spirit and he needs someone to listen, he'll talk, and he likes to imagine Harvey calling him a whiner before absolutely one hundred percent siding with him on all of his petty complaints. Harvey's reliable that way.

Jim is halfway across the room when he looks up from his coffee to Harvey's hospital bed and sees the pressed, undisturbed sheets, the untouched pillow, and no Harvey anywhere in sight. He looks at each bed, unfamiliar yet recognizable faces in each, all of them still and slack from sleep, or whatever else he should call a coma. They won't have answers for him anytime soon.

He rushes back to the nurse's station, coffee spilling a few drops as he stops suddenly, leaning forward over the counter and demanding, “where's Harvey? Harvey Bullock. He's supposed to be in  _ that room _ ,” Jim points with his cup hand, coffee sloshing in his paper cup. “Where is he?”

She calmly flips through a few papers, humming, and Jim curls his fist tighter around his donut bag, breathing in through his nose and out his mouth, until she asks, “didn't you get a call? He woke up yesterday.”

“He what?”

“I'm so sorry,” she says with a small, apologetic smile. “They were supposed to call the family once he woke up.”

“I'm not family,” Jim explains, “I'm his partner, on the force,” he adds. “He’s a cop.”

“Right. That explains it. I'm sorry you weren't told. The doctor said too many visitors might overwhelm him. You can see him today, though.”

Jim nods, “thank you,” he moves away at a brisk pace, then dashes back, “where?”

“Ward C, room 318.”

“Thank you!” he calls back as he rushes for the stairs.

-

Ward C is quiet for different reasons, because half the people inside aren't in their rooms, but are actually milling about the halls, stretching out stiff muscles and working previously unused joints. Jim finds 318 easily enough, and he slips into the small room, noting the desk and extra chairs, and the current lack of new cards or balloons or anything that isn't at least two years old already. He'll have to tell the GCPD the good news after he leaves today.

“Hey,” he says quietly, watching as Harvey blinks awake. “It's Tuesday.”

“Tuesday,” Harvey parrots. He doesn't say anything more, but it's good to hear even that.

“Your excuse to skip work is running out fast,” Jim says as he sits. He takes a drink of his coffee and sets the donut aside on a bedside table. “We're going to have to start jogging together to whip you back into shape.” He laughs to himself at the thought. “And you have two years of donuts to make up for, so you're buying for the next foreseeable future.”

He expects a “oh you think so?” or maybe something like “this is the warm reunion you're going with after your partner has a _building_ fall on him?” but Harvey is silent. He looks around the room, and he regards Jim with the same intensity he uses to study the chair to his left. The longer the silence stretches into something uncomfortable and foreign the more Jim starts to worry, until he finds himself jamming his finger into the nurse's call button to get someone, anyone who's qualified enough to tell him what the hell is going on with his friend.

He's standing in the hall while a nurse checks over Harvey, hand still clenched around his coffee cup, and Lee is there, holding a clipboard of Harvey's records and looking at Jim with eyes full of pity.

“What the hell is wrong with him?”

“Most of the doctors would remind you that he's just woken from a two year coma, Jim.” She glances at her notes a few times, turning pages and frowning down at results, never a good sign. In fact that's usually the universal sign to brace yourself because your dad won't survive the crash, or something along those lines. He swallows around a lump in his throat. “You remember what landed him here I assume.”

“The bomb,” Jim says, nodding. “The building he was in collapsed.”

“During the collapse he sustained a head injury. I have him scheduled for some tests and scans this afternoon to see if there's been any improvements since then, but he went into the coma before we could check his reactions to stimuli. I don't want to get your hopes up Jim. This might be all you get. There might not be anything else left. I'm sorry.”

“No,” Jim shakes his head. “I can't accept that.”

“I know it's hard to hear Jim, believe me. Everyone lost somebody that day.”

“He's still in there. He  _ has  _ to be.”

“We'll do all we can.” Lee reaches out and gives his arm a reassuring squeeze, then she flips through the pages again. “I’m sorry to have to ask this, but you wouldn't happen to know how to contact any family, would you? There isn't anything on file.”

“Harvey doesn't have any family,” Jim says. He looks into the room and watches a nurse take Harvey's blood pressure, at the flat expression on his face as he's poked and prodded. “I'm all he's got.”

-

Jim doesn't make it to his patrol. He doesn't make it past the bench outside Ward C. All he manages to accomplish is a curt, irritated phone call to his captain and drinking four cups of coffee from the complementary pot in the waiting room. Harvey would have complained about it being too weak. He would have also made a commendable effort to cheer up Jim right about now.

But when Jim is able to reenter the room, the echo of Lee's explanation still bouncing around in his head (damage to several key areas of his brain, irreparable, full recovery isn't an option) he sits beside Harvey and gives him a long, hard look.

“I bet your hair hasn't been this short since you were, what? Five? Six maybe?” Not that it's all that short now, having been allowed to grow untended for two years and some change. Four, maybe five inches long, it's well on its way to being the length Jim remembers. “It covers the scar, not that you'd care. You'd probably show it off every chance you got.”

Harvey's at least focused on him, but there's nothing there beyond a faint recognition, and Jim doesn't kid himself. He might remember that Jim was here earlier, but he won't let himself get all worked up just because he wants Harvey to be the same person he was before.

“Lee, she told me everything, but I don't want to give up on you. I can't.” He reaches out a hand and grabs Harvey's. There's a tiny pulse as Harvey squeezes his fingers, and Jim squeezes back. Recognition again, or maybe just an ingrained response, something he's not consciously doing beyond an action-reaction kind of instinct. Jim decides to believe the latter while shamelessly clinging to the former. “I think I liked it better when you were asleep, because I could pretend you'd be yourself once you finally woke up.”

“You're being an awful big sissy when I'm the one that almost  _ died _ ,” Harvey quips back, and Jim looks up from Harvey's hand and into the carefree smirk.

Jim laughs once, incredulous, and with an overwhelming bloom of hope filling his chest. Then, as Harvey blinks a few times, the flat affect is back, and Jim's left wondering if he really  _ did  _ sound like his old self or if he's just projecting. But no, he's still in there somewhere, he  _ has  _ to be. He lifts Harvey's hand off the bed, clasping both of his tight around his palm and pressing his knuckles to his mouth to keep himself from making a sound when he starts to cry properly.


End file.
